Haida Elder, who survived residential ‘school,’ alleges defamation from Catholic priest

Content warning: This article contains graphic details about residential “schools” including the deaths of children. Please read with care for your spirit.

A Haida Elder and residential “school” survivor is leading a proposed class action lawsuit against the Catholic church and one of its priests over what she alleges are “false and deeply hurtful” denialist comments.

Sphenia Jones is scheduled to appear in a “Calgary” courtroom on April 22 after filing a statement of claim against “Edmonton” priest Marcin Mironiuk, the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, and the Oblate Fathers of Assumption Province.

Jones is alleging that remarks Mironiuk made during a mass service in 2021 — where he reportedly described the evidence of unmarked graves at residential “schools” as “lies” and “manipulation” — are defamatory against herself and other survivors who have spoken out about deaths at the institutions.

She is proposing a class action lawsuit, but the defendants from the church are asking that application to be struck down. The court is now set to decide whether it will move forward.

Mironiuk, speaking in Polish, reportedly said during the service that “we are in the presence of lies here in Canada,” according to a translation from CBC, and that Indigenous children “were dying from natural causes and were buried in regular cemeteries, and that’s why we’re living now in a great lie.”

Mironiuk also told the congregation he visited the former Kamloops Indian Residential School without disclosing he was a priest and asked to see “mass graves,” according to the same translation.

The archdiocese apologized for Mironiuk’s remarks, calling the comments “thoroughly unacceptable” and placing the priest on indefinite administrative leave. But Jones said words can’t describe the hurt she felt.

“When he said that,” Jones said, “that hit me; in the gut, in my heart, so badly. It was like he was directly talking to me.”

Jones is from the Haida Nation and survived the former Edmonton Residential School. Accompanied by her daughter, Jones will be flying to “Calgary” on April 21. Jones is asking that singers and drummers rally outside of the courthouse on Monday.

If the lawsuit moves ahead, she plans to take a boat and train-ride journey that mirrors the one she was forced to take more than 60 years ago on her way to residential “school.” Even if the court sides with the church’s application to strike Jones’s lawsuit down, her lawyers said they plan on appealing that decision.

“When I was in the residential school, when they used to punish us, they always used to say, ‘Nobody is going to believe you. Nobody is going to believe you,’” said Jones. “I used to say, ‘I’m going to tell.’”

A special chambers brief for the case said Jones “brings this claim in defamation, on behalf of herself and the proposed class of residential school survivors who like her have spoken out about deaths at residential schools.” The brief details allegations that Mironiuk’s “false and deeply hurtful assertions” have “viciously maligned” these survivors.

“To Ms. Jones and too many of her fellow residential school survivors, these vicious and defamatory statements, left unchecked, risk cruel fulfilment of what they were told as children, and that for too long held true: you will not be believed,” the document states, in part.

“Justice demands that the claim be allowed to proceed to ensure that residential school deniers such as Rev. Mironiuk be held fully accountable for the additional and ongoing harms they inflict, and to vindicate the reality of residential schools that has long been carried on the shoulders of the survivors.”

However, the defendants in the case from the church have filed an application to strike the claim, saying the allegedly defamatory statement did not refer to Jones and the proposed class of people is “not ascertainable or identifiable.”

A statement from the Oblate Fathers of Assumption Province issued on Wednesday said that “while acknowledging he made statements about the site in Kamloops, Fr. Mironiuk has expressed publicly that he did not put into question the existence of any graves,” and added that he didn’t mean to cause harm to survivors.

“(Mironiuk) has acknowledged that the School has a hurtful reality for some of its attendees and laments any loss of life which occurred,” said the statement from Oblate Fathers of Assumption Province.

“Fr. Mironiuk personally pledged further to advance truth and reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians and had educated himself about this issue even further.”

The Oblate Fathers of Assumption Province’s statement added that they want to strike Jones’s lawsuit down “on the basis that it fails to disclose a cause of action.” The Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton declined to comment since the case is before the court system.

According to Jones, the Catholic Church had requested to settle her claim — which she opened last year — out of court, but she refused.

“I want it to go around the world. I want everybody (survivors) to talk about what happened to them,” she said. “If I settle out of court, it would be just like me asking for the money and that’s it. I don’t want no damn money.”

She said that she hopes her healing journey will help find where the children are buried, and inspire other survivors to follow a similar path in speaking out and seeking justice against the atrocities committed against them.

“I want all First Nations people to do what I’m doing. They always say, ‘Save our children.’ This is the way we’re saving our children,” she said.

“We’re saving our children from the future, because things haven’t stopped yet. They’re still taking our children.”

Jones was only 11 years old when she was taken from her Haida homelands and transported by boat and later by train to the Edmonton Residential School.

Opened in 1924, the “school” was operated by the Missionary Society of the Methodist Church for one year, and came under the administration of the United Church of Canada in 1925 until the “school’s” closure in 1966.

Court documents say Jones “was rounded up along with dozens of other children from Haida Gwaii by federal officials, who threatened their parents with jail if they did not give up their children,” it states.

“The children were put on a train, which stopped multiple times to pick up other children from communities along the route. Several children did not survive the journey to Edmonton.”

Jones said she recalls being placed in a boxcar to look after Indigenous babies, who were all “crying really hard.” While at the “school,” Jones remembers witnessing the deaths or disappearances of other children, something that continues to haunt her.

“Ms. Jones has firsthand knowledge of children dying and being buried at the Edmonton Indian Residential School,” the court briefing document alleges.

“She saw where they were buried, along the fence — an area now overgrown with trees. One of her fellow students, Eddie Hans, was made to bury many of the children.”

Jones said she was given the task of looking after babies who were tied up in iron cribs, who she remembers were “all of the sudden” gone one day.

“Years later, I found out that my cousins buried so many babies in Edmonton,” said Jones, who is now 80 years old.

According to the court documents, she had a classmate named Vicki Stewart who allegedly “died after being hit in the head with a wood implement by one of the nuns.”

“On reporting the incident, Ms. Jones was punished, told to keep quiet, and told nobody would believe her,” the document alleges. “The school didn’t want to send Vicki to the infirmary because of what happened, and Ms. Jones had to prepare her body by wrapping her in a blanket.”

Jones and a friend were also punished for sharing their cultures amongst themselves. She said she had three fingernails yanked off, after her hands became swollen from chemicals that she was forced to use to scrub cement floors with a toothbrush. She recalls other children having teeth pulled without anesthesia.

“I still hear the babies screaming in my head. To this day. I can’t get that screaming out of my head,” she said.

“I feel like this journey that I’m going on … I’m going to feel a lot better after this. My healing journey will be ended by then.”

Jones said planning to recreate the journey she took as a child — this time to try to find justice — will help her as she hopes she can “talk directly to this preacher and the church.”

“By the time I’m done with this, I’m not going to be in the pain that I was in the beginning. It’s all going to be healed. And the only reason I can say that is because there’s going to be a lot more people coming out and saying what happened to them,” she said.

“They’re not going to be afraid to speak up now.”

Aaron Hemens, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, IndigiNews